Ron Gostick

Ronald A. Gostick (July 18, 1918 – July 16, 2005) was a long-time figure on the Canadian far right and founder of the Canadian League of Rights. Gostick was involved in the Canadian social credit movement and later published far-right and antisemitic material over the course of 50 years, including the Canadian Intelligence Service and On Target! and numerous books and pamphlets.

Gostick influenced several figures on the Canadian far right. Jim Keegstra got most of his reading material through his membership in Gostick's League.

David Lethbridge, an anti-fascist activist and Communist Party member, described the CLR and Gostick as a "danger" because they soft-pedaled an essentially "fascist" message. Lethbridge told The Globe and Mail that "What made them dangerous was that they came across as mainstream." In the 1945 federal election, he ran as the Social Credit candidate in the Ontario riding of Grey North, coming in last place out of four candidates, with 250 votes.

In 1946, Gostick founded the "Union of Electors", a social credit based provincial party that was inspired by the more radical Quebec wing of the Canadian social credit movement, the Union des electeurs.

He also began his publishing activities at the same time, beginning to issue the periodical Social Credit in 1947. The Social Credit Association of Canada disowned the publication in 1950 because of its anti-Semitism. Gostick renamed the periodical The Canadian Intelligence Service in 1951.

He wrote (or co-wrote) several books:

Canada's Future - More Debt and Bankruptcy? Or Financial Reform and Prosperity? (2002)(co-written with Eric D. Butler) The Battle for Canada The Architects Behind the World Communist Conspiracy (1968) Canada the Moment of Truth (1978) Canada - its Glorious Potential and The Things I Didn't Learn in School A Prophecy? (1980) Zionism and the Middle Eastern Crisis ("Published as the Supplementary Section of THE CANADIAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICE", August 1958)

In the early 1950s, Gostick was a public speaker at meetings sponsored by the American rightists Gerald Smith and Wesley Swift (who later founded the Christian Identity movement).

Gostick died of cancer two days before his 87th birthday.

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